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Live-Action Remake of Akira
GusherJizmac writes "Looks like Warner Bros. is looking to remake classic anime, Akira, as a live
action feature-length film. Will current computer generated special effects be enough to bring this masterpiece to life?" We touched on this earlier, but now it looks closer to production, since Norrington has finished shooting for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
no way this can ever be as good as the anime. there's something about anime that just can't be done right with live-action and real actors.
zing
the actors will have to be very good at stressed-out grunting and making their *grrrrrrr* faces. on the bright side, anna nicole smith can play tetsuo when he grows into that blob in the stadium.
What will the cash cows think of next? I mean this is just an attempt to capitalize on an already successful movie. In other words, no matter how shitty this movie is a lot of people will go to see it anyway. And it will probably be pretty bad....
All apologies to the CGI geniuses out there, but there is no way in hell your graphics will match the insanity that was Akira.
Akira isn't just a movie, it's a work of art. There are just some things that don't translate from comic books to live action, and at the bottom of that list is Akira.
"In the process, the biker must do battle with anti-government activists, greedy politicians and irresponsible scientists."
How about dealing with the societal and ethical impacts of forced and natural evolution and experimentation? Or maybe I was watching a different movie...
...that makes us have to redo a cartoon as live action? I just don't get it. The rest of the world doesn't view cartoons as just something for the Saturday morning kiddies, but here if you watch anime, most people look at you like you have two heads.
It would actually be nice if Disney would just release all of those old Japanese Anime titles they bought up as DVD's with English Sub and Dub tracks. Instead they bastardize them into some multi million dollar flop. *sigh*
- No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades really cramps his style.
"League," set in a version of Victorian-era England where fictional characters like Dr. Jekyll, Capt. Nemo and Allan Quartermain band together to fight crime for the queen, is scheduled for a summer 2003 release via Twentieth Century Fox.
Do we really want this guy to do Akira?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
I don't think messing up anime into films is a good idea.. The only thing good i can think of that is that it will get greater exposure, but as in the case of Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, and countless other victimized animes, is this really what we want? These animes were just fine until some media exec decided to pay the language translation & dubbing people the minimum wage..
I argue for animation because I believe it provides an additional dimension for film art; it frees filmmakers from the anchor of realism that's built into every live-action film, and allows them to visualize their imaginations. Animation need not be limited to family films and cheerful fantasies. The Japanese have known that for years....
The thought of what a live action Akira might be like scares me.
"I've been a fan of the anime for many years and understood which elements would have to be brought to a live-action translation of it," Robinson told Daily Variety.
I really hoped that the interviewer would have asked Robinson if he read the manga, because the manga is epic compared to the movie. A lot of first time viewers, and rightly so, complained that alot of Akira didnt make sense. And thats because it was a movie that that tried to capture a story the size of the Bible in just two hours. I really dont see how he can stay true to Akira if he never read the manga, and from his comments, he gives no indication that he has. Personally I think the money could have been much better spent creating a high quality Akira animated series, like the GITS2 series being made now.But then again hollywood is going ape over superhero movies, and they figure they should give anime/manga a shot, but for a live action movie, especially for the first anime live action American movie, I think Ghost in the Shell would have been a better fit. It would have been much easier to accomplish visually, it is on many levels an equal to Akira, and it is certainly more understandle for the larger audience, even without reading Shirows manga.
On a personal note, if the movie does not contain the
"KANEDA!!"
"TETSUO!!"
"KANEDA!!"
shout sequence at the Olympic stadium then it isnt worth watching.
I'm still waiting for the live-action Overfiend series.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
And why do they think making it live action would be worthwhile? You don't buy anything by going that way, despite popular belief. If anything, you put more strain on the audience.
Look at Inspector Gadget, for example. A cartoon man with a telescoping neck is quite acceptable. But when you do that in live action, like in the Inspector Gadget movie, it's DISTURBING. It doesn't even look right! You start asking questions like "How can a hat possibly contain a helicopter?"
While I'm on the subject, let's talk about Video Game to Movie licensing: Any game brought to the screen should be ANIMATED. Nobody has ever wondered what Mario would look like as a live human. And now that we know that, we regret having that question answered.
Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck star as Tetsuo and Kaneda, who will for the purposes of this film be given wholesome American names such as "Mike" and "Richard" (In the final act, Mike makes a humorous observation that Richard's name can be shortened to Dick!)
The two high school football players who were wrongfully accused and placed in a boys home (Not that there's anything wrong with that) do battle with the evil Osama Bin Akira (Played by Vin Diesel). The battle results in the evil leader using his mind control powers to send Mike battling against democracy by channelling previous generations of communists through dark rituals involving Lenin and Satan.
In the end, Mike is brought back down to earth by Richard singing the national anthem over a loud speaker and waving old glory. The two have a long embrace and make a joke about how they love each other but aren't gay.
5 stars!
s200.org - visit it (me), love it (me).
Worse yet, how about making a trilogy that dips into three other movies filmed before it for content, only to have remakes of *those* first three movies made to reinforce assertions made in the second trilogy?
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
Apparently, Will Wheaton will star, Natalie Portman will make a brief appearance (her first "full-frontal" scene), the special effects will be rendered on a Beowulf cluster of Ti notebooks running whatever the latest beta Linux kernel is available, a new character will be created who can only say the words, "cowboy" and "neil", and the movie will end with Yoda using the force to make the entire universe disappear.
Well between the all-star cast and the killer ending, I'd say we don't have much hope of any sequels...
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
A movie has both video and audio. I imagine that while the visuals will hard to improve on, we can look forward to an otherwise stimulating (more modern) soundtrack.
Wow. If you had included "BSD is dying," I could have gotten 100% of my recommended daily allowance of trolling by reading one easy comment.
That would have been cool.
I write in my journal
...if they keep the rape and bludgeoning of small deformed children
I wonder if they can get Mr Miagi to play the spazzed-out scientist?
Battle Angel Alita is also possibly going to become a movie (James Cameron possibly involved?). I think it has a better shot at being successful because at least that had sympathetic characters and a comprehensible plot.
At one level, this is true, there is no way that live-action can duplicate anime, but the re-creation of this classic is not about duplicating a piece of anime, but presenting a great story to an audience which would otherwise never experience it.
Also, providing conciencious marketing, attention can be drawn to the fact that the live-action version is based on an anime film, so it may draw new viewers for the original and perhaps anime as a whole.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
If you concede that The Matrix was almost live-action anime, they might just be able to pull this off.
Think about the early chase sequence between the agent and Trinity. Now think about the chase late in the movie in the open-air market, complete with Ghost in the Shell-style exploding watermelons. They might just be able to make it happen.
I write in my journal
Not to troll, but why does Akira get all the attention that it does?
I enjoyed the film, found it interesting, but it did not "blow me away", like it seems to do for everyone else...
The animation was very well done, but other than that - I found the plot confusing, and that the characters were not developed enough. The main character was hardly introduced; it was difficult to get a feel for his character - his struggles, his motivations, etc. I have not read the manga, but from what I have heard, there is more depth to the story. (Granted there is only so much that can fit into two hours.)
I'm assuming that if this is actually done live-action, and especially if the western audience is kept in mind, many things will be changed - some for the better, some for the worse. In which case, more time may be spent developing character background. But, it also quite probable that the overall feeling may get lost in the translation even using computer graphics. Regardless, I'm still interested and will probably see it.
Don't get me wrong, I am not anti-anime. Miyazaki's films, especially US releases Princess Mononoke and My Neighbor Totoro, are some of the most amazing films I've seen.
I just haven't seen the fascination with Akira yet. Perhaps I may, if I read the multi-volume manga, and watched it again...
--
jason
... If Mini Me will get a role ...
As far as I'm concerned, the Akira soundtrack is among the finest scores ever created for a film. It's quite perfect as the background discourse for the overall feel of the production.
Kaneda's bike - I've *got* to see the real thing!
We've already got the limited edition DVD of the animated Akira, so why not a live action? It'll be interesting to see what they can do. I just hope they have the budget to actually make a credible attempt.
Apparently they are going to be making Tetsuo and Kaneda brothers in the movie for some stupid reason.
Don't forget where the Wachowsky brothers got their inspiration from...MANGAs ! Now I agree that Akira is a work of art as anime but with the current technology at the hands of the right people this could really be something.
Tell me I'm not the only one who noticed the reference to Ghost in the Shell when agent Smith lands on top of the building on one knee with his gun pointing up as the roof cracks at the impact. That was a good example of a pure manga-style anime scene which looks quite good in live-action in fact if you watch the Matrix documentary its obvious that this was a Manga turned live-action and what a surprise...it was a major breakthrough.
People were saying the same thing about LOTR and that's not half as bad as people feared (even the hardcore fans of Tolkien). If we keep an open mind and judge this film for what it will be (not what we *think it will be* then we'll at least give them a chance to try and bring another dimension to Akira...I personally hope that it'll be as good as the Matrix in terms of effects and that we'll get that Manga/anime feeling that made the Matrix so different (for me anyway)
Everyman dies, not everyman really lives. -W.W
Actually, the "League" comic book is a pretty good concept by Alan Moore (Writer of "Watchmen" - arguably one of the best comic books - and the "From Hell" comic books).
It's one of those indepth comic books and draws various literary characters from the Victorian-era. I mean, someone has even posted a panel-by-panel annotation for it. The second series has a martian invasion of earth similar to War of the Worlds.
So we really want this guy to do Akira? I don't know. But that doesn't mean you should dismiss the "League" concept so quickly.
Final thoughts.... Hopefully The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen won't be butchered like the "From Hell" movie. Hmm... IIRC, Sean Connery is going to be Allan Quartermain.
Whoa!
Yeah, you just know they're going to wreck Akira. Who knows, the Hollowood version might even make a whit of sense.. *BLASTPHEMY* !
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
we need live action akira like we need anime plan 9 from outer space...
akira looked "cool" but that was about it -- the story was total spaghetti.
I have to second this. When I rented the crappy, blurry, poorly translated VHS video many years ago, I was impressed by the animation, and interested by the story.
But, since I didn't have a clue what was going on, I was able to fill in the gaps with anything I wanted in my head. I imagined a damned awesome story in there, which stuck with me for a long time.
I picked up the new DVD recently, and I was blown away. The animation is truly fucking incredible. And the story actually made sense -- and it was a pretty decent story!
But, it wasn't an awesome story. It was a good story, but not an epic "peel back your brain like an onion, forever reworking your perception on the universe story." I watched it about 6 times in 3 days, hoping to find something awesome there, but it just never showed up.
I was extremely disappointed -- I'd spent the last 8 years thinking that Akira might have been a truly genre shattering story, and that I had simply not been smart enough to understand it. Instead, it discovered it was just a pretty danged good story, combined with beautiful sound and graphics.
I'm thinking of picking up the comic book at some point, just to see if there's more there that didn't make it into the movie. I'm afraid of being a little disappointed again, though -- it might just be another decent story with beautiful graphics. Perhaps I should simply adjust my expectations.
Anyhow, I'm not sure if I'd really appreciate a live-action version of Akira. If they didn't try to follow the previous movie too closely, like some sort of ill-concieved psycho remake, it might be pretty danged interesting. If it turns into the classic Hollywood movie, I probably won't spend any money to see it.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
I've been saying "Canada".
Why didn't anyone tell me? I've been making an ass out of myself.
Back when they remade "Psycho" a couple of years ago, someone made the astute observation that filmmakers should remake BAD movies, in order to try and improve them, not GOOD ones. What's the point in remaking a classic? Odds are, you're just going to fuck it up. With bad movies, there's nowhere to go but up.
(By "bad" I mean everything that isn't a classic, so remaking mediocre movies like "The Thomas Crown Affair" is fine.)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Norrington can't capture the style.
The anime captured the manga's style because the same guy made the manga and wrote/directed the anime. Norrington's a different guy using a different style. The only director who I think can do Akira's style in live action is James Cameron, who has other plans and wouldn't do it anyway because it's too similar to Terminator 2. If Norrington is mainly interested in Akira's cyberpunk/post-apocalypse style, he should have stuck with Blade or another screenplay because this way he's up against Akira's baggage and The Matrix sequels.
What Akira's anime lost was substance: it only told about 1/4 of the manga's story, and what it kept it rearranged. If he made two 3-hour movies (split conveniently before and after the apocalypse), he could get most of the manga's storyline. That way an Americanized live action version of Akira may actually feel closer to the manga than the anime version did. But does he have the guts to do that?
And even if he had the energy to make it, could he withstand the bad PR? Akira stars a loser teen who gets to act out revenge fantasies and orgies (think Columbine) and its big event is another boy who shows his fear of murder by blowing up a city (think WTC). For Norrington to get the $100M or so needed to make Akira, he'd have to remove those parts, risking ruining the plot.